Do you believe or do you epoché?

[roydop]

Thought is not spacial. You can't investigate "space" "between" thoughts. This is dishonest gibberish made to sound deep and thought provoking when it makes absolutely no coherent sense at all.

So you can't be thought fee and therefore it's gibberish? Actually sit in a chair and try to stop your thoughts and witness what happens. Is this not scientific in basis?

How do I know you can't stop your mind from chruning out thoughts? How can you not see how important this is? Objectivity.

Just witness thought. Then you will be SEEing it instead of thinking about it.

I give up. No idea what all this nonsense about being "thought free", "stopping thoughts" or "investigating space between thoughts" means (or how answers about God's existence or otherwise can be deduced from the alleged practice). As far as I'm aware, no one is "thought free" unless they're sitting in the morgue waiting to be either buried or cremated.

The answer as to whether God exists is an EXPERIENCE, and that experience brings about understanding of God.
I speak of God not from a strictly intellectual perspective, but from first-hand accounts.

~80 % of my interior dialoge has ceased and my life is peaceful and free of stress.

Please, if you are serious about this God stuff you must get past trying to understand it conceptually. Thought is what actually keeps one from the experience of God.

No matter how difficult, one must transcend thought to realize one's divinity.

[Immanuel Can]

...there is no way to conceivably know.

That statement is one I'm thinking is worth examining. How did you decide that it was inconceivable for another person to know whether or not there are dimensions of being or a God? What was your reasoning pattern there? Track it for me, if you would be so kind, so I can make sense of it.

Why don't you explain how you would even verify whether there is a God or not?...Give one example.

Well, off the top of my head, I can think of several ways it could be done, assuming God exists. Most obviously, He could reveal it directly to a person or persons. It could be discoverable experientially. It could be inductively warranted by empirical data. It could be deductively necessary on the basis of given axioms. It could be calculated based on probabilities. The nature of the universe itself could reveal it. Or God could do the miraculous, or incarnate and do it...

Sorry -- that's a lot more than one example. In point of fact, there are a multitude of ways it would be quite possible to be done -- even if, for some reason, we assert that it never has been done in any of those ways. But I don't see what rational basis we'd have to say we know that.

Thee are many ways for a person who is not me to know what I assert I personally do not know. I'm just curious about how your personal not-knowing can be rationally translated into the claim that others can't know either. It looks to me that it needs a supplementary premise of some kind...because on the surface, to say "A doesn't know X" doesn't translate into "B, C, and D don't know X," without some basis for asserting that what A fails to know cannot be known at all, by any means. But obviously, there are such ways...at the very least, in theory.

What prevents you knowing God, then? Is it only that your personal experience has not yet taking you that far, or are you convinced that, for some reason, it never ever possibly could?

I'd just like to know what that reason looks like.

[roydop]

One can only say, "I don't know," not "You cannot know because I don't."

I'm not saying you cannot know because I don't. I'm saying you cannot know because there is no way to conceivably know. What difficulty are you having with that? OR why don't you explain how you would even verify whether there is a God or not? by what magical otherworldly means would you even conceivably be able to do that? Go ahead, let's drop everything else and "cut to the chase." Explain to me how you would know that there is a God or not. What evidence would qualify one to say, "God exists" or "God does not exist"? Give one example.

When one is able to effortlessly abide in/as the bliss of thought free awareness, then you will know God exists.

It's difficult, yes. I'm sure no one expects entering heaven would be easy.

[Walker]

Anything is difficult until it becomes effortless.
Even walking, but folks forget about that because it was so early.

If you're a rightie, try throwing a ball like a leftie.
If you're a leftie, trying throwing a ball like a rightie.
Ain't so easy, is it.

Or, sit on the bench.

There's the space between thoughts, then there's all that space above thoughts, which then opens up to the space below, fore and aft too.

[roydop]

Transcendence of thought leads to completion.

The effortless part... well it takes persistence to get there

[Walker]

Transcendence of thought leads to completion.

The effortless part... well it takes persistence to get there

I think you’ll appreciate this.
It’s authentic.

How Meditation Works
https://www.shinzen.org/wp-content/uplo ... rt_How.pdf

[Gary Childress]

Why don't you explain how you would even verify whether there is a God or not?...Give one example.

Well, off the top of my head, I can think of several ways it could be done, assuming God exists. Most obviously, He could reveal it directly to a person or persons. It could be discoverable experientially. It could be inductively warranted by empirical data. It could be deductively necessary on the basis of given axioms. It could be calculated based on probabilities. The nature of the universe itself could reveal it. Or God could do the miraculous, or incarnate and do it...

There is no empirical data which could warrant anything beyond what you directly experience. You can experience seeing a burning bush that says, "I'm God" but you cannot experience that the burning bush is, IN FACT, God.

There are no axioms that necessitate the existence of God. For example: you can say that everything has a cause all the way back to a first cause but there is no axiom by which we can deduce anything about that first cause with relation to whether or not it was "God".

Miracles would not prove God. If two suns rose in the morning tomorrow it would not prove that the two suns rose because God made them. If a burning bush appeared before you and said. "I am God and I will make two suns rise tomorrow", and it actually happened, again it would prove that you saw a burning bush that told you it was God and would make two suns rise tomorrow which then happened. You can't experience that the burning bush is in fact God. Certainly we might be awestruck and say that was God, which is understandable, but nothing in that experience verifies that it is, in fact, God.

[Gary Childress]

So you can't be thought fee and therefore it's gibberish? Actually sit in a chair and try to stop your thoughts and witness what happens. Is this not scientific in basis?

How do I know you can't stop your mind from chruning out thoughts? How can you not see how important this is? Objectivity.

Just witness thought. Then you will be SEEing it instead of thinking about it.

I give up. No idea what all this nonsense about being "thought free", "stopping thoughts" or "investigating space between thoughts" means (or how answers about God's existence or otherwise can be deduced from the alleged practice). As far as I'm aware, no one is "thought free" unless they're sitting in the morgue waiting to be either buried or cremated.

The answer as to whether God exists is an EXPERIENCE, and that experience brings about understanding of God.
I speak of God not from a strictly intellectual perspective, but from first-hand accounts.

~80 % of my interior dialoge has ceased and my life is peaceful and free of stress.

Please, if you are serious about this God stuff you must get past trying to understand it conceptually. Thought is what actually keeps one from the experience of God.

No matter how difficult, one must transcend thought to realize one's divinity.

80% of your interior dialogue has ceased and your life is peaceful, does not prove the existence of God. It proves that 80% of your interior dialogue has ceased and your life is peaceful and free of stress. Nothing more. (Though, I'm glad you are feeling well and certainly hope it continues.)

[Walker]

Miracles would not prove God. If two suns rose in the morning tomorrow it would not prove that the two suns rose because God made them. If a burning bush appeared before you and said. "I am God and I will make two suns rise tomorrow", and it actually happened, again it would prove that you saw a burning bush that told you it was God and would make two suns rise tomorrow which then happened. You can't experience that the burning bush is in fact God. Certainly we might be awestruck and say that was God, which is understandable, but nothing in that experience verifies that it is, in fact, God.

What would prove God?

What would these phenomena prove?

[Immanuel Can]

There is no empirical data which could warrant anything beyond what you directly experience.

How did you come to this decision? Did you look at the available empirical data, or did you take for granted, for some reason, that none could exist even conceptually?

You can experience seeing a burning bush that says, "I'm God" but you cannot experience that the burning bush is, IN FACT, God.

Maybe. But you've set the epistemological bar too high there. By that same standard, you don't even know that you exist, beyond as a disembodied "brain-in-a-vat," or less than that, even...maybe just a kind of cognitive "ghost" in the midst of a delusion you take for reality.

But those are games, and you and I needn't play them. There are thresholds of certainty that we take as sufficient, and they are something short of 100%, in every case. Empirical knowledge, including all science, is probabilistic not absolute.

The question for Moses is, "Does this burning bush meet the threshold?" But if it does, and Moses can see that it does, then Moses knows.

There are no axioms that necessitate the existence of God. For example: you can say that everything has a cause all the way back to a first cause but there is no axiom by which we can deduce anything about that first cause with relation to whether or not it was "God".

Ah, but once we have a First Cause, there are but two possibilities: an intelligent First Cause, or a non-intelligent one. And which is more plausible?

There are only two non-caused agencies we know of: an intelligent one, and abstract concepts (which don't have an origin, we think, but are just "there," like mathematical truths). Every empirical agency has a prior cause of its being: but we have already established that an infinite regress of causes is actually impossible. But abstract concepts don't "cause" things. (Has the number "29" or "pi" caused anything to happen since the dawn of time? Not that we know.) So what have we left?

[Gary Childress]

There are only two non-caused agencies we know of: an intelligent one, and abstract concepts

A first cause could be an intelligent being or it could be something non-intelligent. Unfortunately none of us knows. Speculate all you want. But that's all it is, speculation.

Ah, but once we have a First Cause, there are but two possibilities: an intelligent First Cause, or a non-intelligent one. And which is more plausible?

Who knows which is more plausible. Certainly no mere mortal does.

[Gary Childress]

Miracles would not prove God. If two suns rose in the morning tomorrow it would not prove that the two suns rose because God made them. If a burning bush appeared before you and said. "I am God and I will make two suns rise tomorrow", and it actually happened, again it would prove that you saw a burning bush that told you it was God and would make two suns rise tomorrow which then happened. You can't experience that the burning bush is in fact God. Certainly we might be awestruck and say that was God, which is understandable, but nothing in that experience verifies that it is, in fact, God.

What would prove God?

What would these phenomena prove?

I don't know.

[Walker]

I don't know.

Many moons ago I went to a planetarium show in a big city. I saw constellations outlined and highlighted in a simulated night sky of stars, complete with names and other information.

Recently I went to another planetarium show in another big city. Times have changed. Lots of swirling colors and pretty prose about the awesome size of the universe, the origins, blah blah. I fell asleep.

[Gary Childress]

I don't know.

Many moons ago I went to a planetarium show in a big city. I saw constellations outlined and highlighted in a simulated night sky of stars, complete with names and other information.

Recently I went to another planetarium show in another big city. Times have changed. Lots of swirling colors and pretty prose about the awesome size of the universe, the origins, blah blah. I fell asleep.

Understandable. Female yoga instructors seem to tend to be pretty. Beats a planitarium most days.

[Immanuel Can]

There are only two non-caused agencies we know of: an intelligent one, and abstract concepts

A first cause could be an intelligent being or it could be something non-intelligent.

What would a "non-intelligent" causal entity look like?

Whatever it is, it would have to be eternal (because uncaused itself). What kind of entities do we know that have that quality?

Well, mathematical operations look eternal...in the sense that they are just "always there" and "always right." But it's inconceivable that a mathematical operation, by itself, would "cause" anything. The number "26" has not, in all of known history, "caused" anything. Nor has any number or mathematical operation. So that won't work.

Positing a non-eternal entity as First Cause is an inherent contradiction. And saying "Well, the universe is just part of a multiverse complex" doesn't answer the question, but pushes it backward only one step. The multiverse complex would now need a causal explanation. So that's no good.

So what could it be? What's plausible? Whatever it is, it must have infused a vast amount of energy, order and balance into the original universe, because we can see and measure the entropy from that point very easily. What could do that?

It's an argument to the best explanation, you see. There's no plausible explanation for an uncaused, unintelligent but order-producing entity. But the universe were the deliberate creation and design of an intelligent First Cause...